The Retort

Muhammad Executed

November 20th, 2009 by Mike Schrage Of The Retort Staff

Beltway sniper John Allen Muhammad, 48, was pronounced dead via lethal injection at 9:11 pm on November 10th, 2009 at Virginia’s Greenville Correctional Center. On November 9th, the United States Supreme Court declined a request of a last-second appeal filed by Muhammad’s lawyers, and Virginia Governor Timothy Kaine declined the last-ditch request for stay of execution.

In October of 2002, Muhammad and his then-teenaged lookout Lee Boyd Malvo shot and killed 10 people from a distance in random attacks within a three week period throughout Virginia, Maryland, and the Washington, D.C area hidden in a ‘sniper’s nest’ in the trunk of a Chevy Caprice sedan. Muhammad said that the duo had formulated a “three phase” plan prior to the shootings. Phase One consisted of planning to kill up to six people a day for a month; Phase Two consisted of shooting a Baltimore police officer and then detonating explosives at the funeral; and Phase Three would have involved training homeless children in a proposed Canadian commune to carry out attacks throughout the country if the duo were not paid $5 million. Malvo would later testify that the plan was driven by Muhammad’s hatred of America because of its "slavery, hypocrisy and foreign policy… He's a man of his word. If he tells you he is going to do something, it is done.”

Muhammad, a Gulf War U.S Army veteran, carried out the sniper attacks using a Bushmaster XM-15 .223, the civilian equivalent of the U.S military’s standard issue M-16 assault rifle. Muhammad had long clung to his defense on grounds of mental instability at his various trials, even going so far as to act as his own legal counsel in 2003. Virginia convicted Muhammad of four counts of capital murder in November of 2004, and after jury deliberation, the defendant was sentenced to death. Malvo, now 21, was sentenced to six consecutive life sentences in prison for acting as a lookout for Muhammad, his status as a juvenile greatly contributing to the avoidance of the death penalty. In an official statement released by Virginia Governor Timothy Kaine on his decision to deny a stay of execution, the statement read “Muhammad’s trial, verdict, and sentence have been reviewed by state and federal courts, including the Supreme Court of Virginia, United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, and the United States Supreme Court. Having carefully reviewed the petition for clemency and judicial opinions regarding this case, I find no compelling reason to set aside the sentence that was recommended by the jury and then imposed and affirmed by the courts… Accordingly, I decline to intervene.”